Louise Hearman

When an artist concentrates so strongly on elements of reality, they become hyper-real. This is the method used by a filmmakers such as David Lynch. In Blue Velvet, he turns an ordinary American town into a scene of Gothic menace, focusing on the amplified crunching of insects in suburban lawns or a severed ear lying in the grass. Hearmans paintings can be very Lynch-like in the way she depicts unassuming locations such as a park, a pond, a street or the side of a road, and then introduces a disturbing element.. Her work is distinguished by a very sure and confident touch, even in the smallest details: a patch of light on a cheek or nose, or a glint in an animals eye. In the manner of the greatest painters of the past, Hearman sees light as the key to all forms of painterly expression.

John McDonald, Mistress of Epiphanies, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, March 2004